The chronograph is a complementary mechanism, added to the movement of a watch, which measures the time elapsed during a sports event, industrial operations, laboratory experiments or any other application that requires timing an operation. An application of pressure on a push-button starts and stops the chronograph hand. An additional application of pressure on another push-button is used to return the hand to zero. Depending upon the degree of complication of the chronograph mechanism, one could also envisage restarting the mechanism after a temporary halt or a fly-back hand.
The drawback observed with the chronograph mechanisms that are currently available on the market is that they are started without any noise. This is particularly disadvantageous, for example for a sports coach, who will tend to look away from the athlete to ensure that his chronograph mechanism has actually started, a reflex which can cause measurement errors. The same is true for the measurement of any physical industrial or laboratory phenomenon. The person responsible for taking the measurement instinctively tends to look at the chronograph in order to ensure that it is working and stops looking at the phenomenon that he or she is supposed to be observing.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome this drawback in addition to others by providing a chronograph mechanism which enables its user to know whether the chronograph mechanism has been started properly without having to look away from the event whose duration has to be measured.